After passing through a wide vestibule, I reached a large, shady court-yard with low walls almost hidden beneath a wealth of flowers and foliage. A corridor opening on to the court-yard was flanked on each side by a row of open, white cells, each well lighted by a fair-sized window during the day, and by electricity at night. Each cell is furnished with book-shelves, a table with paper, pen and inkstand, and a chair. All the corridors, which are gay with plants, converge towards a central glass-room, whence the sub-inspector surveys all the radiating corridors under his jurisdiction. Each corridor ends in a workshop, where printing, lithography, shoemaking, metal and steel work are carried on, and between the corridors are garden plots in which fruit, vegetables, and flowers are cultivated. The workshops are reckoned among the best the Republic contains. The printing-office turns out many weekly papers, illustrated magazines, and scientific and literary reviews. Footgear of the finest and most elegant quality is manufactured in the shoe-factory, and the foundry and workshop produce lathes, boilers, industrial and agricultural machines and implements. All the cooking in the Penitentiary is done by steam, and the plant is installed in a large building erected by the prisoners themselves.
Work in the Penitentiary is compulsory. On arrival, each convict receives instruction in some handicraft, chosen by himself or one of the foremen. Of course swindlers and forgers are not admitted to trades like lithography, for reasons easy to understand.
The convicts receive regular wages which vary according to their abilities and are about equal to the standard wages in each particular trade. All earnings are put aside and handed to the convict on his release when he is also provided with suitable employment.
Work is finished at five o'clock in the evening and after a substantial supper the prisoners are divided into nine classes, six elementary and three secondary, according to their culture and intelligence. If illiterate, they are taught reading and writing and later, arithmetic, geography, history, languages, and drawing,—this latter being adapted to the particular trade of each individual. When school is finished, prisoners are allowed to go to the library to return the books they have read and take others for the night.
Instead of a weekly newspaper like that published at Elmira, intellectual development is stimulated by means of lectures delivered each week by the prisoners or their teachers and attended by the Director, Vice-Director, and all the convicts.
In addition to the care lavished by the Director, Señor Ballvé, on the work and education of his charges, he spares no pains to encourage moral progress by rewarding good conduct. As each convict enters the Penitentiary, his name, trial, sentence, and antecedents are entered in a book with his photograph and particulars of his physical and psychic individuality, and these data are supplemented by remarks on his conduct and good actions, if any, so that on his release a clear idea is obtained of the moral progress he has made while in prison.
Penal Colonies
When after unsparing efforts for the redemption of a criminal, repeated convictions prove him to be a hopeless recidivist, the community should decline to allow him to perfect his anti-social abilities at their expense in prisons or at large, and should segregate him permanently, unless, indeed, there is any hope of reform, or circumstances render him harmless. Perpetual confinement in a prison, even of an improved type is, however, both cruel and expensive, but an excellent substitute may be found in the Penal Colony. Here the chief object should be, not to educate, elevate, or redeem the criminal, but to render him as useful as possible, so that he does not prove too great a burden on the community.
Penal colonies should be situated on islands or in remote territories, that is, completely isolated from populous districts. The agricultural colony at Meseplas founded by the Belgian Government is a model worthy of imitation.
In this colony the convict population is divided into four categories: